Speed of Life, filmmaker Ed Radtke’s third feature, is set in Brooklyn and centers around a trio of young teens who scrounge a living by stealing video cameras from tourists and then selling the stolen goods to the local pawn shop. The film’s nominal protagonist, Sam, is more interested in watching the videos of other people, places, and lives than he is in the hot Handycams’ actual resale.
Voyeuristic and borderline experimental by design but never exploitative, Speed of Life is a bracingly honest examination of the human condition in the age of technologically assisted emotional and physical disassociation. The characters, of which there are many, are all looking backward to a past that likely never existed in the first place while trying to circumvent a future that looks grimmer than it actually is. They’re striving mightily to make connections and to weave a tapestry of life from the errant and knotty threads of what once was.
Radtke recently moved from New York City to Austin to take a tenure-track position at the University of Texas Radio-Television-Film Department. The Chronicle spoke to him about his work on the eve of Speed of Life‘s premiere as opening night film at the Austin Asian American Film Festival.
Austin Chronicle: Speed of Life focuses on several at-risk kids and fragmented families. I know from your bio that you’ve worked with social services and taught film and video skills to street kids in real life. How much did you draw from your own experiences and incorporate them into the film?
Ed Radtke: It’s a hybrid. I’ve worked a lot with at-risk kids, and I’ve learned a great deal. I also, as a teenager, was trying to work through and figure out what was important to me. In the film, the [character] Sam is a filmmaker, but he doesn’t necessarily know that he’s a filmmaker, and I really wanted to explore that. It’s not revolutionary, this notion of not really having family per se and living vicariously through the imagery of others, but there is a fair amount of my own experiences in the film. I was a pretty reflective kid, and the notion of being an outsider is certainly something I can relate to.
AC: Were any of your at-risk students involved in the actual production of the film?
ER: They were a part of the process of developing the material. We actually worked with at-risk kids a couple of times trying to figure out how to drop cameras successfully from rooftops or tether them to helium balloons. That was something I knew I wanted to do in the feature, and I thought it was a great opportunity for at-risk youth, either in the field or in their lock-up facility, to try and do something like that. Because it could be both of great value to them but also of great value to something larger than their own work.
AC: Speed of Life is an incredibly layered film with a very large cast and multiple points of view, some “real,” others “reel.” What was your preproduction like? Controlled chaos is my guess.
ER: We actually created a media-making workshop for at-risk teens three summers in a row. For two summers, during the preproduction of this movie, we had teenagers from New York City make media based on the themes that we were exploring in the story [of Speed of Life]. They all read the script, critiqued the script, and talked about what was authentic in it and what was not. We also had them shoot a lot of video, knowing that the video they were shooting could conceivably end up in the finished film. It was an opportunity for a type of collaboration that, certainly for me, was very rare but really exciting. I mean, it was very complex and exhausting, but it was also part of the reason why I was so motivated to try and make it happen.
AC: One of the most compelling aspects of Speed of Life is the fragmented, nonlinear storyline and imagery, which mirrors both the main character’s state of nonfamilial life and also the collapse of the traditional, all-American nuclear family as a whole.
ER: That’s definitely a part of the whole, but I’d like to think there’s a number of things we’re wrestling with. It took me a very long time to conceive of this, figure it out, and finally write it. As you mentioned, it’s fragmented in a number of ways, both in its timeline and in the fact that there are a lot of characters, some of whom intersect and some who never do. The last two features that I’d made were very straightforward linear narratives – you knew the hero in the first frame, you knew the hero in the last frame, and you knew the hero in every frame in between – and Speed of Life was a very different model. I don’t consider myself an intellectual or, frankly, all that amazingly creative or talented. I just feel like I’ve fought really hard and have been patient and persevered.
AC: Speed of Life is screening as part of the Austin Asian American Film Festival. Do you consider yourself an “Asian-American filmmaker”? Or do you eschew that sort of labeling?
ER: No, that means a great deal to me. It’s very much a part of who I am. In fact, some would say that I’m kind of in denial because during my childhood, my formative years, I was an Asian-American kid in an all-white town in Ohio in the late Sixties and early Seventies during the Vietnam conflict. For all practical purposes, we were a family of gooks. That was a very, very challenging time for me. And a lot of it I really didn’t even understand at the time. I was so young and idealistic and naive. I think my work is layered with all those formative experiences, but I also think it’s nothing that I’ve worked through overtly in my films. It’s definitely a part of who I am. I feel a real kinship whenever I have the opportunity to share and be with other Asian-Americans, especially Asian-American filmmakers.
AC: Speed of Life is a densely packed film, filled with multiple storylines, a myriad of characters, multiple deconstructions of reality, and pretty much the entire spectrum of human emotion. What would you most like your audiences to take away from the film?
ER: I think [like] any storyteller that’s trying to tell a story that’s very character-based, there’s a number of things I’d like people to get from the film. One is the indelible nature of film when it really works, with characters that resonate and almost live on after the film. Also, the notion of being dreamers and having idealistic goals about what we hope to achieve in our lives and how feasible that can be if it’s nurtured and fostered. And, too, a sense of connection and belonging, even if it’s not via blood.
AC: The young protagonist of your film literally surrounds himself with video monitors and tape decks as a way of immersing himself into the presumably better, happier family units that he discovers on the videotapes. What’s your take on how youth are feeding and being fed by this massive media revolution we’re currently undergoing?
ER: We all now shoot video, we all have cell phones and Flip cams, and we’re all documenting who we are, where we come from, and what’s important to us. We’re both inundated with this barrage of imagery, but we’re also, I think, very much empowered by its possibility. It’s affecting our attitude in regards to how we see ourselves, which ultimately affects the way we see others and the world around us.
Speed of Life screens Thursday, Nov. 12, 7pm, at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar.
The fifth annual Austin Asian American Film Festival runs Thursday, Nov. 12, through Sunday, Nov. 15. For festival highlights, see “AAAFF Highlights.” For more information, including ticket prices, visit www.aaaff.org.
This article appears in November 13 • 2009.